It took some time today to overcome the shock of the Football Association making a competent nomination for chairman, before beginning to consider what David Bernstein, whose rise to seniority in business and football has been remarkably brisk, might make of the job.

Certainly, hearteningly, he has basic professional competence which some others occupying senior administrative roles in football scarily lack. Bernstein is an accountant who has held directorships or been chairman of significant retail or leisure businesses, including French Connection, Ted Baker and the outdoor equipment company Blacks, for more than 20 years. Brought in to dig Wembley out of its money-pit after his chairmanship of Manchester City ended in acrimony, Bernstein's financial efficiency, coupled with a modest, quietly winning personal manner, won friends at FA headquarters and ultimately this influence too.

A relief, then, that a man of substance, proven abilities and football experience, as a fan and administrator, has been selected, but once the Christmas glow fades Bernstein will see a daunting task ahead, for which he is yet to prove he has the necessary skills or vision. Being the chairman of the FA, as he acknowledged in his brief holding comments today, is not the same as being chairman of a football club or corporation. The reason for that goes to the heart of Bernstein's particular challenge: the FA does not have a single-minded purpose, to win football matches or make money. It is the governing body of England's premier sport, so has a broader responsibility to all who play and watch it, but the FA has struggled terribly in recent years even to define that role, let alone fulfil it to anybody's satisfaction.

Bernstein will be good for managing the finances, weighed down by the Wembley monster he knows intimately, have a reasonable chance of negotiating the heartbreakingly difficult relationship with the belligerent Premier League, and of inspiring staff who inhabit circular corridors of gloom around the stadium. But above all that, the new chairman must strive to establish a purpose, and vision, for the FA itself and ensure everybody, including the Premier League, signs up.

Bernstein's record in football suggests he may find the first task harder than the second, the reverse of what did for his predecessor, Lord Triesman. From his recruitment as a City director in 1994 by the ultimately disastrous then chairman Francis Lee, to his stewardship of the Wembley leviathan, Bernstein's football service has been in boardrooms rather than on touchlines. Triesman had no football business experience but had coached teams and been a referee at the Wormwood Scrubs, rather than Wembley, end of football's rainbow. He brought to the job a gut feel for what the FA should be for – the grass roots, supporters, more equal sharing of money, as well as success for the big clubs and England team – but could not tiptoe through Premier League sensitivities deftly enough to deliver it.

Bernstein, although liked and respected by the supporters at City, has never quite given the impression he has that wider, philosophical feel for the game outside the top professional flight. He has, though, certainly developed his thoughts on the game to a more sophisticated form than the pure business approach he arrived with at City. Then, as a plc-experienced accountant, his expertise was wanted to help City float on the stock market, which would have made Lee and his fellow investors personal fortunes.

That dream died as Lee's City sank, and although Bernstein became prominent for the rescue act he oversaw in the third flight (the old Division Two) in 1998-99, he was nevertheless a director during the first, farcical relegation from the Premier League in 1996 and the two miserable seasons in the second tier (the old Division One). When he took over as City's chairman after Lee was forced out, with new investment from John Wardle and David Makin of JD Sports, and, in Joe Royle, the right warhorse manager for the task, Bernstein proved himself able to keep the purse-strings tight while collecting a squad just about good enough for that famous skin-of-their-teeth play-off promotion victory over Gillingham at the old, crumbling Wembley.

He negotiated City's fabulously favourable occupancy of the City of Manchester Stadium – built entirely at the public's expense – after the 2002 Commonwealth Games, and so should have led City triumphantly to revival, but he fell out with Wardle and Makin over what he insisted was excessive spending being sanctioned for Kevin Keegan, Royle's replacement. History has vindicated Bernstein's stubborn resistance to the £6m signing of an injury-ravaged Robbie Fowler, and, after he left, City fell into financial difficulties again before Thaksin Shinawatra's takeover in 2007, then Sheikh Mansour's a year later.

There is something of Frankenstein about Bernstein's attitude to the City he helped to create at its new stadium. He developed an affinity for the fans, an empathy with the club's stubborn soul at mournful Maine Road, but was then appalled at City's ownership by Thaksin. Now, with City the new billionaires, spending with an extravagance he could never have imagined as chairman, Bernstein is not a frequent visitor to Eastlands.

The appointment of such a skilled, decent man pleasantly surprised many in football today, but part of David Bernstein's challenge as FA chairman will be to convert his undoubted feel for football, that intangible instinct for what is right, into a positive programme for the game's reform and rejuvenation.